


A Little Push

by MissScorp



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Anger Born of Worrying, Angst, Bad Parent Martin Whitly, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Drama, Gen, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Martin Whitly Being an Asshole, Panic Attacks, Sunshine is an emotional support bird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissScorp/pseuds/MissScorp
Summary: Martin tries to give Malcolm a little push but it ends up backfiring spectacularly.For Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt, anger born of worrying
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Sunshine the Bird
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	A Little Push

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jameena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameena/gifts).



> Hello, all, and welcome! 
> 
> This is a response to Jameena's prompt on the Discord server to create a new scenario based on malclombright's gif of the scene in Stranger Beside You where Malcolm grabs his head before throwing his phone.
> 
> This is also for my eleventh Bad Things Happen Bingo prompt, anger born of worrying. 
> 
> Please, if you like this piece, favorite/kudo/bookmark it! Thanks for reading! Take care!

This couldn’t be happening.

It just... couldn’t be.

There was no way.

It simply wasn’t possible.

They stepped up security at Claremont after the incident with Tevin. They tightened things again after he — well, _technically_ his mother — stabbed his father.

After Eve crossed the red line and slapped him.

And yet...

“ _Malcolm, my boy_!” He heard through the static filling his head. “ _You seem displeased to learn I have secured my release from Claremont_.”

“Do I?” Malcolm managed around the bile that wanted to erupt from his mouth in much the same way magma and volcanic gases did from a fissure ripped into the earth. “Can’t imagine why that might be.”

“ _Oh, don’t be so dramatic_ ,” his father chided. “ _I mean, you can’t really expect me to have stayed locked up when our family is being threatened, now, can you_?”

“Considering how you’re the reason that we are in danger?” He huffed a small, humorless laugh. “Yes, I did. Foolish of me, I know.”

Part of him had always known this day would come, though.

That his father would somehow manage to escape and upset what little normalcy he had carved out for himself.

“ _Now, see, there you’re wrong, my boy. I warned you and that girlfriend of yours to leave things alone. You didn’t. Only brought this on yourself, really_.”

“Eve deserved answers.”

“ _Yes, well, and she certainly got those answers, now, didn’t she_?”

“That’s if you told her the truth.”

Something Malcolm found himself increasingly wondering about.

Part of him wanted to believe that what his father told them about Sophie was true.

That he did, indeed, let her go as he claimed.

Another part of him, though, the Harvard educated one who worked ten years as a criminal profiler for the FBI?

He knew serial killers lied.

“ _Malcolm, I got to say that I’m disappointed_.” His father heaved a disgruntled sigh. “ _Not surprised, mind you, but still disappointed. I had so hoped for a father-son team-up here. Just like in the old days. You remember those, don’t you? When you and I would team against your mother and little Ainsley. We made quite a team, you and I. Not a surprise given how we’re the same and all_.”

Of course, Malcolm remembered those days. Teaming up for games of hide and seek, checkers, Chutes & Ladders, Candyland, Old Maid.

Back then Malcolm believed his father the greatest man alive.

A loving father who’d battle the monsters he read to him about.

Then he found out his father was really the monster and called the police to stop him.

Of course, it’d be years later when he found out his father was regularly using chloroform on him to keep him from calling the cops and telling on him.

And that was before John Watkins revealed how his father may likely have given considerable thought to killing him to keep his exploits a secret.

“I have a team, actually,” he told him as Sunshine tweeted and chirped. _Get off the phone_ , he silently translated. If only he could. “We’ll stop Endicott without your help.”

“Well, I’m afraid that’s going to be a bit difficult for you to do, my boy.”

Something in his father’s tone set warning bells off inside Malcolm’s head.

His belly quivered.

His mouth ran dry.

His hand shook but he ignored it as he tried to figure out what his father could mean.

The possibilities were endless.

And none of them good.

“Oh?” He kept his tone carefully, neutrally blank. With his father, the less said, the better. “And why is that?”

“ _Because you are about to get charged with murder, I’m afraid_.”

The bands growing steadily tighter around his head, his chest, constricted to the point he couldn’t draw a decent breath.

His hand spasmed so hard he bounced it off the side of his kitchen island.

Pain radiated across his knuckles but not enough to help ground him in the here and now.

Even Sunshine’s shrill chirp didn’t pull him back from the hands trying to drag him down into the dark abyss he both loathed and feared with every ounce of his being. 

“ _I’m sure your team will understand you had no choice but to kill_ ,” he heard through the dull roaring filling his ears. “ _I’m sure they’ll believe you when you tell them you didn’t do it_.”

The implication couldn’t be more clear: his father was going to frame him for murder and there was nothing he could do to stop him.

A low moan ripped from Malcolm as the implications of those words sunk deep into his soul.

_Ruined_.

He’d be completely, utterly, irrevocably destroyed.

_Humiliated_.

His name, reputation, what little bit of a career he managed to have, gone.

A plethora of images assaulted him.

Faceless detectives twisting his arms behind him as Sunshine flapped about her cage, chirping her outrage, tweeting his innocence, and demanding his release.

The red and blue lights blinding him as he got placed in the back of an unmarked car while people filmed it on their cellphones.

The swarm of reporters as they arrived at the precinct, demanding to know what happened, what he was being charged with, if he finally took up his father’s calling.

Wondering aloud if he was now the Surgeon.

The disappointed looks on Gil, Dani and JT’s faces as he was led into the bullpen, a common criminal now instead of the teammate, friend, _son_ they thought him.

The whispers that’d follow as they led him to interrogation.

The smirks from the people who already considered him a freak.

The revulsion and horror on his mother’s face when she found out her greatest fear had come true.

Fear wrapped itself around Malcolm’s throat and cinched tight as the dark things inside his head taunted him.

_Murderer_ , they whispered slyly. _Just like your father._

His heart pounded; his blood pumped.

His breath came in short, shallow pants.

His vision frayed at the corners.

He needed to get out of his loft but couldn't make his legs obey his command.

His father kept talking but Malcolm could no longer hear him.

The pressure in his chest was making his head light but there was nothing for him to focus on.

There was nobody there to help pull him back.

Even Sunshine couldn’t pierce the darkness slowly closing its great gaping maw over him.

The only person he had a connection with at the moment was the person who created this situation to begin with.

The father who failed him at every turn.

Who manipulated him every chance he got.

Used him for his own demented purposes.

Anxiety and worry turned into a ball of rage in his churning belly. _Enough is enough_ , he decided as he heard his father bark his name. _He doesn’t get to control me anymore._

“ _C’mon_ , _Boy_!”

A howl of rage, of pain burst from him before he could stop it. Sunshine chirped insistently, wanting out, wanting him, but Malcolm couldn’t give it to her. His hands gripped his throbbing head, fingers digging into his scalp.

Malcolm flung his phone before sinking to his knees. Glass shattering broke through the cacophony. He looked up, brow furrowed, and body shaking still from the force of emotions tumbling around inside him.

_There, one of the bottom windowpanes_ , he realized, eyes widening at sight of the hole in the middle of the splintered glass. _My phone must have went through it._

Malcolm felt some small bit of satisfaction from ending the call with his father so dramatically.

His mother wouldn’t be pleased when he told her about the broken window.

_Not like she’ll be pleased when she finds out why I tossed the phone that broke the window._

He’d worry about his father, the broken window, and his impending arrest tomorrow, he decided as Sunshine started to softly whistle.

If Malcolm didn’t know better, he’d say it sounded like she was singing, “ _Little darlin_ ’.”

Malcolm curled up on the floor and listened to her. Translating her tweets and chirps into the words he knew by heart...

‘ _Here comes the sun_

_Doo-doo-doo-doo_

_Here comes the sun_

_And I say it's all right...’_

**Author's Note:**

> You can find the gif at this link: https://66.media.tumblr.com/a55be1ee90341a1237f39801b06d649b/c0ad46875160b7d0-23/s540x810/55cca202b6d68d680a585d5fe563693d6413e3d0.gifv


End file.
